Day Eleven: Surprises in strange places

Every day on our drive to site we've been passing the Mill of the Black Monk, once part of the monastic complex but now being converted into an Italian restaurant. We've always realised that built into the fabric is a lot of recycled Tudor masonry, almost certainly robbed from our mansion. Yesterday we finally met Mauro and Paulo who are responsible for this transformation, who very kindly have agreed we can have access to the building to record any interesting features.

Hunting the 'lost' Tudor mansion, enlarge to spot the details

After an initial visit by Pete and Hugh (including a fine espresso), the crack drawing team of Claire and Morgan went in and started to identify interesting features to draw. These include reused doorways, fireplaces and windows, and whilst they're clearly 'out of context' they do help provide a more detailed picture of what the mansion would have looked like.

Making a fine entrance

Back on site work carried on a pace too. We started excavating undisturbed Tudor and medieval deposits and this has produced an interesting range of finds. One of the most unusual was a nearly complete (if broken) ceramic 'cucurbit'- one half of a piece of distilling equipment. This contained an obvious copper deposit, so we're not quite sure what they were up to! This and other star artefacts will appear in a special finds round up on the blog in a couple of days.

Back on site

Kaya and Bryony 'on the rocks'

Our numbers were a little reduced today, so all who turned up were greeted with the unusual sight of both Alex and Pete mucking in, and shifting some of the largest pieces of out of place masonry.

Braced for action

Given the dire weather reports (which never materialised), Hugh decided to do his bit for the team and prepare a delicious and reviving soup for lunch, having found a left over box of soup from his previous excavation at West Halton several years ago. Surprisingly this didn't quite prove the hit he intended...

Dinner is served at Gulag Bretton

Work continued in Trench Two, and today we were helped out by several local school groups who assited with the trowelling and finds washing. The large wall is really beginning to show up nicely and finds of 16th or 17th century window glass are on the increase, so it looks like we've definitely found another part of the Tudor complex.

Something seems to be affecting Sandy,
lets hope it's not the lentil soup consumed earlier

So all in all another productive day that saw us finding even more evidence for the Tudor mansion both above and below ground.